Poster Session II
Project Type
Poster
Project Funding and Affiliations
MPG Ranch
Faculty Mentor’s Full Name
Akasha Faist
Faculty Mentor’s Department
W.A. Franke College of Forestry and Conservation
Additional Mentor
Madeline Mayorga; madeline.mayorga@umconnect.umt.edu
Abstract / Artist's Statement
Rangelands provide critical ecosystem services for societies across the globe, yet land use changes, climate change, and invasive species are causing large-scale rangeland degradation. To maintain effective rangeland ecosystem function, it is critical we understand the comprehensive ecological dynamics of these systems. One crucial ecological variable that is often overlooked is the soil seed bank, which is otherwise defined as the community of germinable seeds stored in the soil of a given system. Many ecological studies and models leave out soil seed bank communities, despite their undeniable importance in rangeland ecosystems, and instead only consider the aboveground vegetation community. In the studies that have considered the soil seed bank, land management history and soil depth have had their own respective impacts on soil seed bank density and diversity, but few have combined the two aspects. By combining these two questions of how soil seed banks differ across land use histories and associated soil depths, we gain an understanding of how land management strategies may lead soil seed banks to diverge from the typical model of seed density and diversity in relation to depth. My proposed study will take place in a grassland ecosystem south of Missoula, Montana, consisting of two differing land management history sites and between two different soil depths. I hypothesize that the more heavily managed site will have a more homogenous, and less diverse soil seed bank between soil depths as compared to the un-managed site due to the complex land-use history of this site.
Category
Life Sciences
The potential role of soil depth and land management history in rangeland soil seed bank community dynamics.
UC South Ballroom
Rangelands provide critical ecosystem services for societies across the globe, yet land use changes, climate change, and invasive species are causing large-scale rangeland degradation. To maintain effective rangeland ecosystem function, it is critical we understand the comprehensive ecological dynamics of these systems. One crucial ecological variable that is often overlooked is the soil seed bank, which is otherwise defined as the community of germinable seeds stored in the soil of a given system. Many ecological studies and models leave out soil seed bank communities, despite their undeniable importance in rangeland ecosystems, and instead only consider the aboveground vegetation community. In the studies that have considered the soil seed bank, land management history and soil depth have had their own respective impacts on soil seed bank density and diversity, but few have combined the two aspects. By combining these two questions of how soil seed banks differ across land use histories and associated soil depths, we gain an understanding of how land management strategies may lead soil seed banks to diverge from the typical model of seed density and diversity in relation to depth. My proposed study will take place in a grassland ecosystem south of Missoula, Montana, consisting of two differing land management history sites and between two different soil depths. I hypothesize that the more heavily managed site will have a more homogenous, and less diverse soil seed bank between soil depths as compared to the un-managed site due to the complex land-use history of this site.